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WFP Delivers Food Aid to Darfur as Sudan Famine Looms

Women and children wait to fill their jerrycans with water at the Huri camp for people displaced by the ongoing conflict in Sudan, south of Gedaref in eastern Sudan, on March 29, 2024 during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. (Photo by Ebrahim Hamid / AFP)
Women and children wait to fill their jerrycans with water at the Huri camp for people displaced by the ongoing conflict in Sudan, south of Gedaref in eastern Sudan, on March 29, 2024 during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. (Photo by Ebrahim Hamid / AFP)
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WFP Delivers Food Aid to Darfur as Sudan Famine Looms

Women and children wait to fill their jerrycans with water at the Huri camp for people displaced by the ongoing conflict in Sudan, south of Gedaref in eastern Sudan, on March 29, 2024 during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. (Photo by Ebrahim Hamid / AFP)
Women and children wait to fill their jerrycans with water at the Huri camp for people displaced by the ongoing conflict in Sudan, south of Gedaref in eastern Sudan, on March 29, 2024 during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. (Photo by Ebrahim Hamid / AFP)

The World Food Program said on Friday it had negotiated the delivery of the first two convoys of food aid into Sudan's Darfur region in months, amid warnings of impending famine caused by a one-year war and lack of access to food aid.
The war between Sudan's army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces has sparked widespread hunger in the country, after destroying infrastructure and markets and displacing more than eight million people.
Catastrophic hunger, the term used on the household level for famine conditions, is expected in Khartoum and West Darfur, which have seen the fiercest attacks, according to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS Net), as well as in many other areas of Darfur that house millions of displaced people.
One convoy with 1,300 tons of supplies was able to arrive via the Adre border crossing with Chad into West and Central Darfur, two areas already seeing emergency levels of hunger after being overrun by the Rapid Support Forces, Reuters reported.
In early March, the army said it would allow deliveries by air as well as through the Tina border crossing into North Darfur, the only one of Darfur's five states that has not fallen under RSF control. The second convoy used that route, WFP said, and together the convoys contained food for 250,000 people.
More than 18 million people facing acute hunger need assistance, the WFP says.
"I fear that we will see unprecedented levels of starvation and malnutrition sweep across Sudan this lean season," WFP Sudan Country Director Eddie Rowe said in Friday's statement, referring to the upcoming planting months.
The previous cereal harvest is half of previous levels according to the Food and Agriculture Organization, while prices of some goods have doubled.
Many in Darfur, particularly in displacement camps, say they have not received any aid since before the war. The UN's aid response for Sudan is only 5% funded.

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Syria’s National Dialogue Conference Is in Flux Amid Pressure for Political Transition 

03 January 2025, Syria, Damascus: Syrian leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa stands during a meeting at the presidential palace in Damascus. (dpa)
03 January 2025, Syria, Damascus: Syrian leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa stands during a meeting at the presidential palace in Damascus. (dpa)
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Syria’s National Dialogue Conference Is in Flux Amid Pressure for Political Transition 

03 January 2025, Syria, Damascus: Syrian leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa stands during a meeting at the presidential palace in Damascus. (dpa)
03 January 2025, Syria, Damascus: Syrian leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa stands during a meeting at the presidential palace in Damascus. (dpa)

An official with the committee preparing a national dialogue conference in Syria to help chart the country's future said Friday that it has not been decided whether the conference will take place before or after a new government is formed.

The date of the conference has not been set and the timing "is up for discussion by the citizens," Hassan al-Daghim, spokesperson for the committee, told The Associated Press in an interview in Damascus Friday.

"If the transitional government is formed before the national dialogue conference, this is normal," he said. On the other hand, he said, "the caretaker government may be extended until the end of the national dialogue."

The conference will focus on drafting a constitution, the economy, transitional justice, institutional reform and how the authorities deal with Syrians, al-Daghim said. The outcome of the national dialogue will be non-binding recommendations to the country’s new leaders.

"However, these recommendations are not only in the sense of advice and formalities," al-Daghim said. "They are recommendations that the President of the republic is waiting for in order to build on them."

After former President Bashir Assad was toppled in a lightning opposition offensive in December, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the main former opposition group now in control of Syria, set up an interim administration comprising mainly of members of its "salvation government" that had ruled in northwestern Syria.

They said at the time that a new government would be formed through an inclusive process by March. In January, former HTS leader Ahmad al-Sharaa was named Syria’s interim president after a meeting of most of the country’s former opposition factions. The groups agreed to dissolve the country's constitution, the former national army, security service and official political parties.

The armed groups present at the meetings also agreed to dissolve themselves and for their members to be absorbed into the new national army and security forces. Notably absent was the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which holds sway in northeastern Syria.

There has been international pressure for al-Sharaa to follow through on promises of an inclusive political transition. UN special envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen said this week that formation of a "new inclusive government" by March 1 could help determine whether Western sanctions are lifted as the country rebuilds.

Al-Daghim said the decisions taken in the meeting of former opposition factions in January dealt with "security issues that concern the life of every citizen" and "these sensitive issues could not be postponed" to wait for an inclusive process.

In recent weeks, the preparatory committee has been holding meetings in different parts of Syria to get input ahead of the main conference. Al-Daghim said that in those meetings, the committee had heard a broad consensus on the need for "transitional justice and unity of the country."

"There was a great rejection of the issue of quotas, cantons, federalization or anything like this," he said.

But he said there was "disagreement on the order of priorities." In the coastal cities of Latakia and Tartous, for instance, many were concerned about the low salaries paid to government workers, while in Idlib and suburbs of Damascus that saw vast destruction during nearly 14 years of civil war, reconstruction was the priority.

The number of participants to be invited to the national conference has not yet been determined and may range from 400 to 1,000, al-Daghim said, and could include religious leaders, academics, artists, politicians and members of civil society, including some of the millions of Syrians displaced outside the country.

The committee has said that the dialogue would include members of all of Syria's communities, but that people affiliated with Assad's government and armed groups that refuse to dissolve and join the national army -- chief among them the SDF -- would not be invited.

Al-Daghim said Syria's Kurds would be part of the conference even if the SDF is not.

"The Kurds are a component of the people and founders of the Syrian state," he said. "They are Syrians wherever they are."